System information

Troubleshooting XNS 14-307

XNS: XNS Broadcast Packets Not Forwarded by Router

Symptom: XNS servers do not respond to broadcast requests from clients.

Table 14-2 outlines the problems that might cause this symptom and describes solutions to those

problems.

Table 14-2 XNS: XNS Broadcast Packets Not Forwarded by Router (continued)

Possible Problem Solution

Missing or misconﬁgured xns

helper-address command

Caution: Because debugging output is assigned high priority in the CPU

process, it can render the system unusable. For this reason, use debug

commands only to troubleshoot speciﬁc problems or during troubleshooting

sessions with Cisco technical support staff. Moreover, it is best to use debug

commands during periods of lower network trafﬁc and fewer users.

Debugging during these periods decreases the likelihood that increased debug

command processing overhead will affect system use.

Step 1 Enable the debug xns packet privileged exec command and check

the output for XNS packets that have an unknown type xx

speciﬁcation.

Step 2 Use the show running-conﬁg privileged exec command to view the

router conﬁguration. Check the conﬁguration of the client-side

interface to see whether an xns helper-address interface

conﬁguration command entry is present.

Step 3 If the xns helper-address command is not present, add it to the

client-side interface.

Syntax:

xns helper-address network.host

Syntax Description:

• network—Network on which the target XNS server resides. This

is a 32-bit decimal number.

• host—Host number of the target XNS server. This is a 48-bit

hexadecimal value represented as a dotted triplet of four-digit

hexadecimal numbers (xxxx.xxxx.xxxx). The host must be

directly connected to one of the router’s directly attached

networks. The number FFFF.FFFF.FFFF indicates all hosts on the

speciﬁed network.